


Another Hero

by maat_seshat



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, IN SPACE!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24654202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maat_seshat/pseuds/maat_seshat
Summary: "If I had only the ship to face him in his fleet, in his flight from truth, where I might burn the proof of his injustice into his skin with searing light. But, no, I am trapped upon this ground, and can only face him as a snake, hidden beneath the grass, with the fury to kill but without the wings to fly my victory justly through the sky."
Relationships: Beatrice/Benedick
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	Another Hero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



The sonic boom drew the women's eyes toward the sky to see the groom's arrival in his fighter craft, escorted by his party. Beatrice watched sleek metal looming close, gleaming against the distant bulk of Leonato's orbital elevator, connecting Messina to the stars, and listened absently to the modulating whine of the engines as the ships turned toward a nearby landing field.

The shiver that went down Hero's spine twitched the train of her wedding gown where Beatrice and Margaret carried it together, holding it off the grass. "Cousin?" Beatrice asked, as Hero stared forward, silent.

Margaret tugged gently on Hero's sleeve. "It is your wedding day, lady! Do not let your cousin's melancholy infect you."

"I am not _melancholy_ ," Beatrice snapped. She saw Hero's shoulders tremble with quiet laughter and took advantage of her position to glare at Margaret behind Hero. 

Margaret returned an innocent look, then turned her entire body with exaggerated movements back to face Hero. "At least you have avoided your cousin's _Benedicktine_ austerity," she sighed. Hero giggled and sped her steps as the wedding pavilion came into view.

Beatrice nearly dropped the train. "Benedictine? What do you mean by that?"

"Why, only that your countenance would make a two thousand-year-old monk proud! Stern and disciplined as the historic station orbiting Venus in Sol."

Leonato, waiting at the pavilion, gestured impatiently, though the groom's party were nowhere in sight. Hero briefly tried to glare over her shoulder at both of them, but the smile curving her lips gave the lie to any irritation. She was a vision, Beatrice admitted, and quickened her steps to match Hero's. At least the near-run silenced Margaret's jibes, and Leonato's blustery presence pre-empted any others.

The nightmare built in fits and starts once the men arrived. Claudio might have simply been awkward, as nervous as Hero at their wedding. But then came the accusation. That Hero had been false in her affection for Claudio was improbable enough, but that Hero could be a traitor, abusing Claudio's and her father's trust to steal secrets for Don John's rebellion was unthinkable.

Beatrice did not know if she would ever forgive herself for standing frozen with horror while Claudio flung the message case at her cousin. It struck Hero's chest like a fragmenting missile, popping open to reveal a thin film of printed plastic. Hero stumbled back, hands spread automatically to clasp the case, and then crumbled. Beatrice barely caught her, only to have to lay her flat and try to keep her breathing. Beatrice had not had the breath to scream for help as Claudio, Don Pedro, and their men had left in their fighters, the fury of their departure buffeting those left on the ground. She knew, though, sitting in the spaceport's medical wing, the most sophisticated facility on the planet, built to the highest standards for spacefarers, that she would never forgive her uncle for the minutes he spent forbidding the medical robot's approach, haranguing Hero's fluttering eyelashes until they, too, went still. He had ceased only when Benedick pulled him aside, the officiant ordered the bot forward, and the bot's mobile treatment dome closed over Hero's still form to carry her away.

Now Benedick came through the doors to join Beatrice. "The plastic of the message was of a spacefarer's sort, not available on Messina."

"And none of my cousin's doing." Beatrice exhaled through her teeth.

Benedick knelt before her. "Your uncle knows that now. She will be vindicated, Beatrice."

She laughed harshly. "And who will do it?" She stared up at the sky through the ceiling. "I take the elevator into orbit only with my uncle's permission, you see. Everyone does. He seldom gives it, and no one would risk his wrath to allow me beyond the station. But those who own fighters move as they choose. Who can tell pilots with the freedom of the stars something they do not wish to hear?" When she brought her eyes back down to Benedick, he was opening his mouth. She reached for his hand, silencing him. "You tried, did you not?"

He let out his breath, discarding whatever argument he had planned to make and instead turned his hand to clasp hers. "I love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?"

The tears that gathered in her eyes and choked her throat were bitter and sweet at once. "As strange as the thing I know not. I might say I loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I fear for my cousin." He did not let go of her hand. She could no longer tell which of them clung more tightly.

"By the stars and my ship to reach them, Beatrice, you love me." 

"Do not swear, and eat it." Her hand trembled where she grabbed his shoulder and shook it, but the door swung open before he could respond, and they both bolted to their feet, unbalanced and swaying against each other for a moment. Benedick was in a better position to see the newcomer's face, and Beatrice's heart began to beat painfully faster, her mouth dry with fear, when he did not step back but merely swung them both to face the doctor. Beatrice knew before the woman opened her mouth.

"I am sorry." 

Beatrice could not absorb the words after that, let them instead wash over her and promised herself that she would consider them later. When the kind, even-toned voice finally fell silent, she asked, "Can I see her?"

The doctor inclined her head. "This way." She led them to a small room, too small to be a comfortable recovery room, but there was a bunk built into the wall and not a gurney, so Beatrice supposed they had arranged Hero to make her fit for viewing. She heard the distant murmur of the doctor promising to inform Leonato herself. Beatrice did not have long, she thought, before her uncle would be at Hero's side, weeping with regret. She reached for Hero's hand and found it blistered and swollen, and words from the doctor's explanation floated up in her memory. "Anaphylaxis..."

She staggered. Benedick caught her. "God forgive me." She could not touch Hero's hand.

"What offence, sweet Beatrice?" Benedick's voice at her ear was a comfort she could not accept.

"I was about to protest I loved you." _As my cousin fought for her life and lost_ , she did not finish.

His hands flexed against her sides, and his throat bobbed in a swallow. It was a bitter consolation that he did not know how to do this either. "Tell me what I may do for you. Anything."

The plan that finally came together was breath-taking. "Be my pilot." She twisted in his arms to face him.

His face held only confusion. "Gladly, Beatrice, but for what?"

"I will kill Claudio."

His breath came out as if punched. "Not for the wide world." Yet he still did not let her go.

She pushed away from him. "You kill me to deny it." When he still did not let go, she added fiercely, "Farewell," and wrenched his fingers off her arms.

He twisted his hands to clasp hers again. "Wait." 

Anger rushed in her ears, and she could barely hear his words or her own, though they wrenched at her throat. Finally, she hissed, "You would rather be my friend than help me fight my enemy," and Benedick staggered back from her. 

"Is Claudio your enemy?" He sounded almost lost. 

"Is he not the worst sort of villain, to accuse my cousin of betrayal both personal and public on her very wedding day? He dishonored her, broke her heart, and then killed her with the false proof he brought of her treachery. Had he but taken the stolen page to her himself, her very body would have testified against it." Benedick opened his mouth to speak, but Beatrice's rage was no longer frozen and inchoate. Now she brimmed with words. "Instead he rides into the sky on a weapon and spacecraft both, where I am tied to orbit and below with elevators and stations. Oh!" The intensity of her words drove Benedick back a step. "If I could but fly, I would chase him to the center of the galaxy and see him burned alive in the corona of a star—"

"Beatrice," Benedick tried. She drove him back again, until he stopped against the wall, without ever touching him.

"Sweet Hero! She is wronged, she is slandered, she is gone. Such heroic testimony, such valor to tell a lie and swear it. If I had only the ship to face him in his fleet, in his flight from truth, where I might burn the proof of his injustice into his skin with searing light. But, no, I am trapped upon this ground, and can only face him as a snake, hidden beneath the grass, with the fury to kill but without the wings to fly my victory justly through the sky." She stepped back and turned away from him. "But if no one will help me to face him according to the laws of space, I will make my way upon the ground."

After a long, frozen moment, Benedick said finally, "You are truly resolved to do this?" He reached out to her, but dropped his hand before grasping her arm.

Beatrice turned back to him and met his eyes without a hint of softness. "I am."

He nodded. "I will fly you, then."

* * *

They went first to a deserted portion of the outer asteroid belt. "How much do you know about the targeting system?" Benedick asked, glancing back at Beatrice in the gunner's seat.

Her smile was a snarl. "Merely tell me which target to shoot."

He opened his mouth to ask for further detail, then thought better of it. He scanned the sensors for a smallish scrap of rock and tagged one in the computers for her. He added his intended maneuvers to bring them close to it. "I sent you a target and my own—"

"I see them," Beatrice cut him off. "Go."

He went. As they flew, asteroids and stars blurring around them, he could almost forget that Beatrice intended to take them up against his brother in arms. They approached the optimal point of the curve, and Benedick tensed, wondering how well Beatrice would work with the targeting system. He had hardly thought it when the shot flashed out, light pulverizing a small asteroid. The computer's evaluation confirmed that she had hit squarely: not just an accurate shot, but one perfectly calibrated to the asteroid's structure, to make it crumble to the smallest, most harmless particles. He put them onto a safe, clear heading, then turned to stare at Beatrice.

Her smirk was almost happy, a few shadows lifted by his surprise. "I manage travel through all the changeable wormholes in our system. You are far more predictable than they." She inclined her head as if granting him a concession. "Though of course the movement of orbiting asteroids is more predictable than you are."

Benedick felt the smile trying to curve his mouth. He raised an eyebrow at her instead. "I shall be grateful, then, to be judged less of a menace than your wormholes. Though I should not be surprised that you sharpened your wits on the most perilous mystery of space travel."

"Oh no," she assured him. "You are by far the greater menace. It was merely that predicting the changes of the wormholes might warn me of your arrival—or your departure."

He could not resist reaching a hand back to her. "I believe you may have known my movements before ever I did, then. Useful knowledge for a gunner to have of her pilot."

She squeezed his hand. "Such small dreams," she replied, more quietly than he was accustomed to hearing from her. "If you are willing to fly, I will navigate you anywhere in the universe."

Benedick searched for words, and found instead an alert on his screen, flashing with increasing urgency. Beatrice dropped his hand with a gasp and began to query both the ship and the more distant monitoring beacons. Details scrolled past, too fast for Benedick to register their meaning. Beatrice slapped a cone of danger onto his screen. "Go," she ordered. "This is a rogue wormhole, and we must not be trapped within it." She muttered unintelligibly to herself, clearly continuing to process the data his sensors were taking in. 

Benedick took them away, out of Beatrice's cone of danger and out of the plane of the asteroid belt, whose asteroids' predictable orbits would shortly be far less predictable. He fancied he could see the wormhole's initial impact in the speed with with his fuel reserves dropped while he pushed them beyond the range of its strongest electromagnetic and gravitational effects. Beatrice sent him a revised map of the danger, and he breathed a small sigh of relief as the fuel loss slowed. They had the distance and velocity to control their response to the wormhole. He turned them in a slow arc to remain close enough to observe.

Beatrice hummed absently. "This isn't where we normally see rogue wormholes." She looked between the visual viewport and the screen that added in all of the movement in the non-visual spectrum. Benedick drank in the wonder in her eyes. "It's a pity we'll never know where it goes."

Benedick grinned. "Indeed. How terrible that you will not know every route into and out of Messina."

She bared teeth back at him. "Every route that a rational navigator would use." She cocked her head. "Though I suppose that does exclude you."

Benedick nodded agreeably. "We did establish that I am no navigator."

"You follow—" Beatrice cut herself off, and looked away. He no longer followed Don Pedro, did he? Not truly. The thought stung. Benedick swallowed.

"Why, Beatrice, are you calling yourself less than rational?"

She met his eyes and smiled. It was small and twisted, but it brightened her eyes. "But not less than a navigator."

"Never that," he said.

Beatrice frowned, attention jerked back to her screen. "What was that?"

Benedick glanced down at his own. "That is not natural." He could not say what about the small object tipped his instincts. It was no more regular or irregular than many pieces of space debris, no larger or smaller than the other objects dancing in the forces of the wormhole. "Was it drawn in at the other side of the wormhole?"

"That would accord with its movement," Beatrice acknowledged. "Mostly." She sounded displeased.

Benedick nearly missed the flash, but his ship helpfully highlighted the movement. "That was engine exhaust. That thing is dodging the other debris."

Beatrice cursed with her usual creativity. "I cannot tell if the choices are automatic or a living pilot." 

Benedick watched a scrap of rock careen close enough to strike sparks off the vessel's flimsy shielding. If there was a pilot in there, they were either exhausted beyond reaction or had nerves of iron. He knew the instinct to jerk back from objects that loomed near with startling rapidity. "Perhaps both. Automatic movement within bounds chosen by a conscious mind." He stared down at Beatrice's cone of danger. The small pod was within it, though coasting jerkily to its edges. "Do you know how long the wormhole will remain violent?"

Beatrice's answer came so quickly that he knew she had been asking the same question. "It appears to be collapsing already, but I do not have enough about the length of its cycle to know how long the collapse will take." She paused, then added. "Nor can I be certain it will not reopen after collapsing." He tore his eyes from his screens to stare at her incredulously. "The same process allows Messina's stable periodic wormholes to rotate among destinations," she said defensively. "Why do you think I'm so familiar with these calculations?"

Benedick shook his head again. "I appreciate the predictability of ships all the more," he muttered.

"Ships that would go nowhere without our unpredictable stellar phenomena." Most of Beatrice's focus remained on her data, the words almost an afterthought.

"I bow to your superior understanding of unpredictability," Benedick replied. He frowned down at the calculations behind Beatrice's cone. "I can fly us safely to the pod and back out, unless misfortune is truly determined to crash down upon us. Could you catch the pod with a tractor if I did?"

"Of course." Beatrice sounded affronted. "Do you have any idea how helpful your computer support is? It does half the work for me."

Benedick snorted. "Glad to hear it. That's never been a compliment my gunners have paid." He began swinging them back toward the wormhole at an angle to skirt as much of the danger zone as they could. He sent a tentative route to Beatrice.

"Perhaps if you did not cycle through as many young companions as your ship does computer updates," she muttered, sending back a minor suggestion to avoid an area of magnetic activity. He accepted it, and returned the revised course with tags noting debris that might endanger them unless she destroyed it before it could crash into their fighter. 

"If only all the recruits to Don Pedro's forces had your quick wit. Alas, most of them require more patience than you offer." He heard her stifled laugh, and his shoulders released a little of their tension. 

"I see you were at the mercy of your leader's match-making." The fighter's guns flashed, clearing their way through the wormhole's clutter, each time one step ahead of the moment Benedick would have needed to take note of the obstruction. They both fell silent as they approached the pod. Benedick passed as close as he dared and felt the moment when their inertia increased as Beatrice caught the pod. It appeared instantly in his fuel consumption numbers, and he forced himself to wait for the optimal moment to once more push away from the wormhole's gravity. Finally he did, and breathed a sigh of relief.

Beatrice highlighted a discreet beacon nearby. "This one has life support, for when people must fly out to repair structures in this area of the system."

Benedick began his turn before asking, "Do you not want to wait to see if anything else comes out of the wormhole?"

Beatrice hummed disagreement. "We can return if it reopens, but the moment of collapse is always least predictable, and I do not trust the lifepod's shields."

"We go, then." Benedick took them away from the chaos, gliding toward Beatrice's beacon and hoping that whoever—if anyone—was in the pod would survive the time it took to reach it.

Beatrice sat solemn behind him, only the steady flow of queries and sensor data between his ship and the area's beacons testifying to her continued attention. The wormhole finally collapsed behind them with an unnerving stream of energy, shortly before they reached their destination. As he took them in to match the orbit of the beacon, she said, "Scholars from the planet will be not long in coming. Everyone from Messina knows the possibility of rogue wormholes and the greater likelihood within our system, but this is the first that has appeared within several lifetimes. They will want to study it."

"I will be happy to send them my data," Benedick told her. 

Beatrice released the pod delicately, and the magnets around the beacon's airlock clamped it down. His eyes widened. "The systems in this pod match ours," she said, sounding as surprised as he felt. "Far better even than yours."

He navigated his fighter alongside the other airlock and triggered the connection manually. "Shall we see what it is?" He instructed his safety suit to deploy even in the presence of atmosphere on the other side of the door and checked to be sure Beatrice had done the same. Her lips quirked when their eyes met. She had been checking his. 

"We shall." She opened the lock.

They both launched themselves through the tube connecting his fighter and the beacon's station, and Benedick closed the access behind them. The fighter would detach and sound an alarm before letting anyone or anything besides him or Beatrice enter.

They cycled together through the beacon station's lock, just as the other airlock opened. A figure stumbled out, delicate and shaky but straight-spined, with hair swept up in an oddly familiar shape. Beside him, Beatrice gasped. The figure reached out an arm to brace against the wall and looked straight at them with an expression of pure shock. "Beatrice?"

"Hero!" Beatrice cried, and took off running. She caught the other woman as she slumped against the wall and lowered them both to the floor. 

Benedick looked into the lifepod and found it empty of anyone else. The small control panel at one side showed how Hero had been able to maneuver, though both fuel and food were nearly exhausted. Everything was exactly where he would expect to find it on a pod from Don Pedro's own flagship. 

Hero was speaking when he returned to the station. "How could you leave the planet? Father locked you out of all of his facilities when you refused to cease accusing Don Pedro's men." She looked up at Benedick's approach. "Did you help her, my lord?"

He crouched beside the women, still ready to move but not looming over them. "It sounds as though the events you experienced may be different from ours. What happened to you in the past two days?"

Tears began trickling from Hero's eyes, already red with weeping, but she met his gaze. "Your lord and his men came into my home on my wedding day and said that I had poisoned Claudio, that I had done it because he found me treacherous and that I sought to cover my role in Don John's rebellion. I was sentenced to execution by ordeal, to survive if I would forty days in the lifepod in which you found me." She straighted her shoulders, asking without words, Do you intend to return me to that?

He nodded slowly. In response to Beatrice's glare, he acknowledged, "That is a trial that some face within the fleet."

She eyed him shrewdly. "If they have no fighter or pilot to plead their case?" She turned to Hero. "What was he doing?" She handed Hero a handkerchief.

Hero took the cloth and dried her face. "I do not know." She smiled wanly at Beatrice. "Perhaps he was with you. Or," she looked between them, "with my cousin. If I understand your words correctly, Signior Benedick, you have not experienced the same two days."

"No," he agreed softly. "Here you were the one poisoned, though accused and exonerated as well of treachery."

Hero shrugged, unsurprised. "I thought it might be so."

Beatrice shifted to sit forward, where Hero would have to meet her eyes. "Were you still the one to welcome your cousin when her mother died and her father left her here as a foster?" Hero nodded slowly. "Were you the one who joined your cousin in learning the astronomical mathematics of Messina so that she would not grow lonely and weary in her study?"

Hero smiled a little. "I was pleased to learn as well, you know." Upon Beatrice's skeptical glance, she amended, "After we completed the basics."

"And were you the one to listen though you grew weary as I devised new mockeries for the pilots of fighters?"

Hero giggled then, wet and choked. "For one pilot, I believe."

Beatrice hugged her. "You are my cousin. That as horrible a fate befell you as the Hero born in this system, I mourn. That your fate brought you back to me, I celebrate."

Hero clung, burying her face in Beatrice's shoulder.

Benedick left them to it for a long moment, but their limited time was ticking past. "Do you want to return?" he asked. 

Beatrice rounded on him like a fury, but Hero put a hand on her arm and shook her head. "I cannot. The wormhole is closed, and even were it to reopen, it is unlikely that it would connect to the same place." She looked at Beatrice for confirmation. "We have scraps of evidence suggesting a connection to parallel universes, but nothing ever replicable, I believe?"

Beatrice's eyes softened and her answer was affectionate. "You always did pay attention to such stories. No replication, I agree, and this wormhole was not open long enough for a probe to enter and return. I doubt it will reopen, and it is still more unlikely to be stable enough to safely use."

Both Hero and Benedick nodded.

Beatrice inhaled deeply. "That leaves you with a choice, then. Do you wish to be Hero risen from the dead, or Hero from another universe?"

"Or Hero declared dead too soon," Benedick offered.

Hero smiled at him. "The last, I think, if it can be achieved."

"Then let us remove all trace of Hero from your vessel and see if we may substitute the living for the dead in the confusion." 

Beatrice, armed with the codes to disable his protective measures, led Hero to his ship while Benedick confirmed that the lifepod's computers contained no trace of the purpose to which it had been put. As he left and sealed the pod off from the beacon station, he pressed the controls on its side, scheduling a sterilization that would remove any trace of organic material. It was intended to render the pod safe for occupancy after escaping even extreme biological disasters, but it would serve just as effectively to hide Hero's presence. He supposed the pod would become one more piece of never-to-be-replicated evidence.

Beatrice had his air and fuel replenished by the time he rejoined her in his fighter. She had also corrupted the records of the past half hour aboard the station. "Security updates in this area are slow, and the beacons were never the most sophisticated systems anyway, not from within." Hero, wrapped in the makeshift shock harness intended more for supplies than passengers at the rear, grinned at her cousin's defensive words. 

Benedick shook his head. "I will have to reconsider my image of the planet-bound," he said, and took them out into space.

* * *

Beatrice accessed the abbreviated database she had crammed from the beacon station onto Benedick's flight computer and asked Hero without looking up, "You have read medical papers, I think?"

Hero's breath caught, and Beatrice turned sharply toward her. Hero was staring down, one hand twisting around her other wrist. She stopped when she felt Beatrice's gaze and looked up to meet her eyes. "It was one of the reasons they accused me."

Beatrice's mouth twisted bitterly, but she kept her voice even. "The more fools they, to mistake care for conspiracy." She pulled up a crude search on the screen. "This includes all materials that we know are accessible within Messina as of the last wormhole shift. We must find something that could counterfeit death, that we may rediscover you alive."

Hero extracted herself from her safety webbing to lean over Beatrice's shoulder. "May I?" Beatrice leaned to the side to allow Hero to search. They debated safety and plausibility, and their easy rapport was comforting enough that Beatrice could describe her cousin's death in clinical words, though her throat nearly closed with rage and grief. Hero's own expression was a peculiar mix of horrified fascination and regret. When they turned to question of which doctors and nurses had attended her dying cousin, Beatrice knew before Hero opened her mouth that Hero would chide her for her suspicion that one of them might give less than their all for fear of Leonato's anger. "As well," Hero pointed out, "once they knew that it was a reaction to the page, they knew my father would realize the mistake eventually." Beatrice let out a breath of bitter laughter, and was startled to hear an identical huff from Benedick in the pilot's seat.

They settled upon a strategy of barest medical plausibility and human manipulation. Beatrice saw the tension settling into Benedick's shoulders and asked, "What do you see us forgetting?" She made a face at Hero when her cousin turned a look of startled approval on her.

"You must dispose of the body," Benedick said, face set in careful lines when he turned to look at her. "I suggest a respectful method, if we can. It makes the grief easier."

Beatrice felt her breath stop, as for a moment a strangled, sightless face overlaid the living Hero seated behind her. She shook her head fiercely to clear the vision. 

"I always loved the volcano at the northern edge of the continent, with the lava lake," Hero said hesitantly. "Did—did your Hero?"

Beatrice wiped the tears away, wrapped an arm around Hero's shoulder, and squeezed. "She did. It would be a fitting resting place."

Hero withdrew to settle herself back into her makeshift safety harness as Beatrice and Benedick discussed how to spirit Hero's body away. They fell silent after coming to an agreement, the future hanging heavy in the air.

Beatrice watched Benedick gather himself straight, steeling himself to speak. "If I know Claudio," he said finally, "he will be guilt-stricken when he takes time to understand how he was deceived. I believe he loved the lady Hero, or at least his idea of you, most sincerely." He glanced back to meet Hero's eyes, and she nodded, slow and measured. 

"I will have vindication of my father and his lord, and we shall see if Claudio is willing to remain in Messina after Don Pedro leaves. Perhaps he can love more than the idea of me, and I of him." Hero's voice was faraway, her eyes distant, fixed on someone she would never see again. 

Beatrice looked between Benedick and her cousin. There was some understanding or agreement that she could barely feel the edges of, but one idea seemed clear. "You can't intend to wed him still!" she cried, horrified. "He _murdered_ you."

Hero faced her squarely, jaw set and gaze firm. "He did not murder me." The uninflected contradiction was a blow. Beatrice felt winded, unable to speak. Hero continued, "The difference between our worlds suggests that he is Don John's victim as well, more physically in mine, perhaps, but the trap here was well-laid. Perhaps we were both fools," and her voice went thin and strained, "but he did not kill me." The tears were sliding down her cheeks again, but she did not reach up to wipe them away until Beatrice broke their gaze and offered her a handkerchief. Hero took it.

"You'll take the time to be certain?" Beatrice muttered, so quietly she wasn't sure Hero would hear. Her hands clenched against the flight computer's screen. 

Hero leaned forward, reaching out a hand to rest over one of Beatrice's fists until Beatrice turned to look at her. "I'll be certain." She was the image of the Hero Beatrice had grown up with, whom she had dressed for her wedding day, and nothing about her had seemed different as they schemed together to bring her back to life. Perhaps even if the Hero Beatrice had wept over mere days before had survived, she would have forgiven Claudio. This Hero shook her gently. "I will be certain, Beatrice. You know me. I find a way to do what I must."

Beatrice bowed her head in surrender. She did. Hero had always known which battles she truly needed to fight, even if Beatrice thought she deserved better.

"I have left my lord's company." Benedick's voice was determinedly light as he broke the tension. "May I throw myself upon your mercy, Lady Beatrice? I'm afraid I have only my fighter to offer."

Beatrice surprised herself with a laugh. "Now that I cannot charge your fighter with carrying me against Claudio? I suppose I will take you anyway."

Benedick took them on a swooping loop that made the stars stream dizzily around them. "I am ever at your service, lady."

"I will find a use for you," Beatrice promised.

***

Beatrice and Benedick did not have much time to themselves after Hero's body disappeared beneath the lava lake, but Beatrice crowded in beside him at the pilot's seat and let him hold her, so Benedick would call it good enough.

They had landed on the planet to Leonato's furious proclamations that Don Pedro's brother's servant's confession showed Hero belied. Benedick thought that only the urgency of executing their switch stopped Beatrice from lashing her uncle with the sharp edge of her tongue, and she still shook a little with grieving rage when they returned from the mountain to find that Hero had waited to rise from her lightly drugged slumber until Claudio had been weeping over her in the morgue. She suffered a chill for her pains, but his joy was such that none could question the good fortune. The reappearance of Hero slipped in alongside the disappearance of Don John.

Leonato organized a celebration of his daughter's exoneration, and Beatrice watched with icy blankness the public declarations by Don Pedro and Claudio alike of Hero's innocence and Don John's guilt, broadcast throughout the system. Then she hugged Hero before the cameras, and there was nothing feigned about her joy.

Benedick drew Claudio aside amid the tumult, leaving Don Pedro to his curious questioners. He inclined his head toward Beatrice, dancing with her cousin at the center of the occasion. "She was ready to kill you."

Claudio laughed, startled. "She was hot with anger," he said, in tones of agreement. 

Benedick did not smile. "No," he said. "She was cold. She knew exactly what she planned. She shot our way through the wormhole's debris field with greater skill than you showed when you left my gunner's seat to pilot your own ship."

Claudio laughed again, but it was half-hearted, uncertain, and soon died. "You are in earnest."

"Deadly earnest."

"You would have let her try to kill me."

Benedick met his gaze without blinking. "I would have been her charioteer and let her fight the battle you thought you could discount."

"My lord, Don Pedro!" The shout cut through the merriment in the room and the tension between Benedick and Claudio. "Your brother John's fighter has been spotted near the Tyrrhenian wormhole.

Beatrice caught Benedick's eye from the dance floor and tapped her side meaningfully. He pulled out the specialized pocket watch, far more accurate than Beatrice truly needed for this, but she was making a point. He eyed the distance between them, then threw the watch precisely to her.

Beatrice looked at it and laughed. "Collect your brother at your leisure, my lord. The Tyrrhenian will do little more than spit him back out into our system for the next four hours, unless he is so foolish as to try so many times over that the riptides tear him apart. He would have done better to make for the Ionian." She looked over at Benedick, considering the distance between them, before Hero took the watch from her, plucked a ribbon out of her cousin's hair, and used it to suspend the watch around her neck.

Hero looked across at Benedick. "She will return it to you at night's end, my lord." Her voice rang out like a well-made bell.

Benedick bowed back with a flourish. "Play on," he called to the room, as Don Pedro sent the messenger from the room with whispered orders. Uncertainty hovered in the air for one long moment, before the piper trilled a cheerful beat and the other players joined him. 

Benedick turned back to Claudio. "I am glad I did not have to face you. I hope that we may be kinsmen, if you will love her well."

Claudio bowed his head, then raised it with a fierce grin. "And here I thought I should have to beat such an oath into you."

Benedick nodded to Beatrice and Hero on the dance floor, trading off the follow and the lead with dizzying speed. "Shall we, then?"

"Lead on."

They joined the crowd, letting it swirl around them, until they overtook Hero and Beatrice almost without warning. Hero spotted them first, and twirled Beatrice into Benedick's arms. She curtseyed to them both, then turned to Claudio. 

Beatrice curtseyed back before grasping Benedick's hand to lead him away. "You will trust him?" Benedick asked.

"I will trust her," Beatrice corrected and swept him into the crowd.

**Author's Note:**

> The title, of course, comes from the line in Act 5, Scene 4:  
>  _Claudio: Another Hero!_  
>  _Hero: Nothing certainer: One Hero died defiled, but I do live._


End file.
